


Event Horizon

by writing_practice



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood Magic, Dark, Dark Magic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intense, M/M, Mild Blood, Niall and Liam both have passing moments, Soulmarks, Soulmates, but it isn't explicit, but not the way you think, proximity curse, the dark side of soulmate magic, the sexual content may be implied but its also very obvious when it comes up, this is seriously intense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27543679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_practice/pseuds/writing_practice
Summary: Event Horizon (noun): the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing, including light, can escape; the point of no return.∾Celebrated as the youngest soulmates to ever find each other, the world sees Harry and Louis as one. But one body was never meant to hold the magic of two.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 29
Kudos: 44





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this fic came from, but I am more than ready to fall into a coma until the end of the year after having to channel such intense energy for the past week. But even in this fic I'm devious, so pay attention for clues. Everything is not what it seems.
> 
> Huge thank you to my beta Zanni for literally staying awake well into the AM to help me, to Aoife for as always being my unending support in sharing my writing, and to Lily for cheering me on with this ridiculously abnormal fic!
> 
> This is very much a different side of the soulmates/soulmarks trope. I've done what I can to add possible triggers in the tags but none of them are the way you think. That being said, if I've missed any, please let me know! 
> 
> And finally, as always, these are characters _only_. I may be referencing real life relationship woes through the medium of magic, but none of this in any way reflects on real life or has anything to do with the people upon which I've based these characters.

It’s raining again. 

He’s going to burn. 

The oncoming storm clouds smoulder, roil and burst in his stomach in a ceaseless wave of nausea. Talons of electricity surge from one ashen smoke-burst to the next. The grey outside winds ever closer to his love-torn passion-worn sanctuary through the open window.

He never closed it. He hasn’t moved since he was left alone, hasn’t eaten in just as long. 

_You crashed together too fast, too soon, too young, before either of you knew who you were, who you could be. You don’t know who you are._

He has to close it. He can’t close it.

Stomach lurching, he staggers upright. The silk sheets of their bed cling to his clammy skin in a silver skein of spiderwebs, seductive and sickening. Their half-light altar is too large for just one.

The unlit bedroom tilts on its axis, tosses him against the bureau. The parallel world trapped within the attached mirror convulses.

It’s been three days since Niall separated them, three days too soon and months not soon enough. Only five and seven years old when they found each other, they’ve never been apart this long. 

Every moment alone is agony.

_You need to possess him. He’s possessed you with an obsession that's deep-seated in your bones now. There might have been a time you could still shake him off, but he's old-world England, so firmly rooted in you that you don’t know when he built his castle around you and locked himself into the dungeons of your heart._

_You want to know where the fuck he’s put the key so you can destroy it and keep him forever locked away in you._

Lightning splits his veins and the sky, leaps through his skin and across the space between trembling fingers. The electricity flares the match he’s holding to life. Its twin flame flickers in tandem in the mirror, two solitary sparks inextricably linked yet destined to never meet. Together they illuminate the exhausted blue eyes half-hidden by a tousled fringe reflecting back at him.

He doesn’t remember the life he had before.

  
  


∾

  
  


His chest hurt. The London fog through their bedroom window was just dark enough to blur the horizon line, turn the glass into a hazy mirror. 

Unlit cigarette tucked between his lips, he frowned, massaging his fingers into the ‘78’.

“Lou?”

Louis glanced at Harry’s hazy reflection a few feet behind him. Amused green eyes framed by an explosion of messy curls met his in the window.

“You forgot the light.”

Louis rolled his eyes, dropped his hand to dig around his pocket for a matchbook.

“I can’t forget.”

Strong arms curled around his waist from behind and the pain in his chest dissipated, replaced with the soothing glow of contact. He pulled the matches out. Lips pressed over the soulmark along the top of his right shoulder.

Energy sparked his fingers translucent, jumped the space between them and the entire matchbook exploded in a violent orb of flame.

The blazing book plummeted from his hand and he stamped it out with the heel of his trainer.

Astounded, Harry’s fingers splayed flat over the smooth plane of Louis’ stomach.

“How did you do that?”

Plucking the unlit cigarette from his lips, Louis inhaled, twisted to look at Harry over his shoulder.

“Don’t fucking know.”

Their lips met. His fingers wound into dark curls.

They were scorched.

  
  


∾

  
  


They didn’t heed the warning when the flames first danced upon their fingertips all those weeks ago.

The loose joggers he’s wearing cling low to his hips and thighs. Shirtless, the tattoos littering his arms and torso glisten beneath the sheen of sweat pearling on his skin.

In the mirror, slim lips curve around the cigarette. He lights it with the spark-ignited match because that’s what he’s always done: a smoke for every unrelenting ache building between them until he can’t breathe without the nicotine.

The rough drag of smoke down his throat is a discomfort he can control, something to feel that isn’t the constant agony the absence of his soulmate has implanted in his chest. 

He coughs out the smoke. Dry ice magic flares up his bloodstream. His body spasms.

They'd been warned about the strength needed to wield the enormous power of soulmates. They were foolish not to heed the warnings, didn't understand the cost they'd be forced to pay until it was too late.

Control it. Because if you can't, it will control you. It will consume you.

_Neither of you were ever meant to contain the magic of two. Now it floods you. It overwhelms you. Your body is trying to repair and rebuild but it overflows in an endless burning infinite cycle._

The first crash of thunder rattles the open window, shakes the skeleton of the house around his solitary form stood alone in its ribcage.

_One piece at a time. That’s how people slip away. Hold on, hold on, don’t let go, tighter and tighter until the pieces break, disintegrate, crumble through your fingers._

The power continues to surge. Choking on the pain, he curves into himself, desperately gouges his fingers into the heart tattooed on his arm to bleed out the black-inked anguish when his nails break through.

_You ignored the ache, chose instead to dream in blackberry wine and sunshine, believing nothing could hurt you because you were together. But blackberries are purple and wine still drips from the bottle as blood oozes from a corpse not long dead._

Magic bursts from him in a single blaze of agony.

Every moment apart is torture. 

But every second touching has become the embrace of open flames.

_You were one risk away from paradise. No matter how much is at stake, you took this one last risk because it could mean the world to you in the end. Except your world is ending far from your arms because you’ve taken that risk and now you can’t take it back. You’re on the horizon line now._

_Blackberry wine still lingers on your lips._

Watching him leave with Niall was agony, but he’d had no option left but to let him go.

  
  


∾

  
  
  


“Ring Liam. Don’t do this alone,” he whispered. 

Only the open doorway separated them and the dark circles beneath tormented eyes matched his own. He was leaning into Niall now, already needing the support.

“I have to do this alone.” His grip on the doorframe tightened. 

“We’re not strong enough alone anymore.” 

“I’m strong enough when it comes to you.”

Like an overstimulating addiction they fell into one another. Soothing warmth momentarily flooded the veined icicles in his bloodstream then mutated, immolating him from the inside as the magic swirled between them and fused.

“Lads, don’t!”

Harry’s treacherous fingers curved feather-light around the side of his neck. Louis winced, sucked the air from Harry’s lungs, surged deeper into the kiss.

Niall tore them apart, jaw clenching as the electricity crackling over their skin seared his hands. 

The power fizzled back to a deceptive shimmer when they disconnected.

Blistered bruises of cornered magic marred Louis’ skin in the shape of five delicate fingerprints.

  
  
  


∾

  
  
  


Wind whirls through the gaping hole of the open window, sweeps the hair from his eyes. Papers soar off the desk, tiny spirit wings given one chance to fly before the storm discards them scattered across the furniture. Stained words drip down their white world, fragmenting further with each new drop of rain. 

The gust whips steadily-soaking curtains against painted walls plastered in memories and thrums the guitar with two broken strings lying in the corner. 

_He’s intensity; he’s every perfect note of every favorite song that you can’t help but feel, refusing to let you float your way through life. He’s the rush of firsts – first kiss, first time, first love, first fight – all rolled up into one disgustingly attractive body of unrestrained passion. He’s the part of you grabbing your life by the reins and sending you careening from one emotion to another. He’s intensity. He’s feeling._

_He’s forcing you to feel everything._

The unchecked magic coursing through his veins flares his blood in cerulean streams and bursts into the air. The power surge steals his breath, folding him over. 

_Sometimes you wish there was a reset button on life. Sometimes you want to take it all back, go back to before you kissed him there in the candlelight._

_But the greater part of you knows you'll never give up the memories of how you’ve loved him all these years, no matter how wrong it was._ _  
_

Another string snaps. The guitar in the corner teeters on its stand before falling with a dull crash to the floor. Against the stolen earth its remaining strings release a desolate cry.

_So spin around on your merry-go-round, because the wheels keep turning and turning and the world is twirling and twirling and you’ve forgotten how to keep your heels on the ground. You’ve spent too long with your feet in the air and your head in the clouds, trying to deny everything you haven’t found without him, trying to deny what can never go away._

He blinks. His world greys at its frayed edges. 

Why are his strings broken?

The clouds burst from drizzle to downpour. He chokes through another breath of smoke as thick drops pelt the windowsill and shatter into a thousand liquid crystal prisms. 

The clouds had cracked open the last night they’d spent tangled together too, each raindrop colliding with a tiny cry so the rainstorm seemed to be screaming at the heavens while the sky crumbled with all the radiance of a primordial torrent. His world then and now is a broke-down fairytale in shades of blue and light.

  
  


∾

  
  
  


Lips and hips collided, desperate for one final relief from the unforgiving ache of raw power whittling away their bones. 

The lashing rain, a cool caress as it blew into the room through the open window, couldn’t quench the firestorm of magic melting his insides now that they were connected. It fanned the curtains inwards and steamed across newly-bared skin as their clothing dripped to the floor, piece by piece.

Neither of them whispered sweet-nothings or moaned softly-broken pleas for more. Their love hung oversaturated between them, dripped down their bodies as they swayed together in the storm-torn silence. The heat of summer had finally broken into the sweat of need and desperation clinging to their skin. Now they begged for each other in lightning strikes. The rolling thunder throbbed out the lyrics of his heart in a drumbeat against his skin.

Rain saturated the floor, landing like tears on red-flushed cheeks and dipping into the slip-slide of open kisses.

Green and blue met, sparked teal in the flashing twilight. 

Thighs wrapped around a waist. Hips ground into hips. Knees scraped into the floor. A white-knuckled hand crackling with blue magic gripped the windowsill for balance. A clap of thunder muffled the slide of skin as they shared a small pocket of air between each other’s lips. 

Harry swept rivulets from the _You broke it_ typewritten tattoo stamped across the length of Louis’s right shoulder. The heat of his tongue wasn’t enough to combat the agony of his hands branding molten magic fingerprints into Louis’ skin.

Arms around Harry’s shoulders, Louis erased the space between their rocking bodies, panting ravishing pain into Harry’s neck. The magic that used to dance over their skin now cauterized his insides, fusing them ever more together. His fingers coiled into the soulmark skidding halfway down Harry’s back between his ribs, claiming the _Who are you_ as his own.

In the silence inside the thunder their gasps mingled, faster, faster.

Harry shuddered and crushed Louis to him. Louis choked, biting into Harry’s skin.  
  
Lightning streaked over the rapture painted across kiss-swollen lips and rolled-back eyes. Wind drove the sodden curtains over the open window, dimmed the room as ecstasy blacked out his vision. Thunder overpowered his gulped-down cries of temporary release. For a few blissful moments the agony vanished as the pent-up magic exploded from their skin.

Raindrops slid in silent star trails down their cheeks, dripped down sweat-slicked bodies as they collapsed into each other in a tangle of limbs. Coveting the gale, they begged into broken kisses for the windstorm to refill their starved lungs before their overloaded bodies refilled with unrestricted power.

  
  
  


∾

  
  
  


Reeling, he braces against the bureau, prays for the strength to stand on his own. His gaze falls to the playing card tucked beneath the ashtray and half-empty pack of smokes, dented and torn at one corner. He slides it out. Through smoke and lightning he reads the words scrawled across the King of Hearts for the first and millionth time. 

_This double vision; this sick collision._

_Your cathedral’s still here_

_Built around your own twisted devotion._

_I know because it’s my devotion too._

He follows the sloppy handwriting to the bottom, jumps the space between to the single line written there, to his name whispered in the margin in jagged penstrokes.

_Remember, Hazza._

Hazza.

Hazza.

Harry.

He’s Harry.

The half-burnt cigarette falls from nerveless fingers into the ashtray. 

Panting through the pain, he wrenches his head up, eyes locking onto the wide blue eyes trapped inside the mirror and sparking with uncontained magic. He knows those eyes, knows the perfect curve of those lips and the soft brush of that flyaway fringe. He knows the lad staring back at him better than he knows himself. 

That’s not him. No, he’s...he’s….

Fingers numb, he tries to trace one high glass cheekbone, stroke smoothe stubble and graze lips that should be warm. Instead a hand echoes his own, a tantalizing illusion of touch that he can’t feel.

His lips form the word. The apparition in the mirror copies him.

 _Hazza_.

He’s heard that name so many times before from those lips and the sound winds through the lightning illuminating his skin, bright and slow, deep and fast. No. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. 

_You try to sleep with your eyes open, try to turn off your mind from the constant sound-waves crashing over your senses in inverted minor chords. Because that’s who you are, who you’ve become: inverted- a minor key left constantly one note away from a fulfilling perfect pitch that allows you to breathe deeply, breathe easily._

That’s not his name.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

Hazza.

Harry.

He’s Harry.

He clutches the card, clutches the edge, and opens his eyes.

Deep green peers out beneath weeping curls clinging to a too-pale forehead, the glow of veins highlights a chest littered with fingernail gouges, red welts deep enough to bleed. Gashes lascarate the true heart tattooed on his arm, the heart he’s always worn on his sleeve. The heart for him.

Alone. This is who he is: alone.

His lad is gone.

“Hazza,” he tries, watching his reflection choke out the word. 

Rich and slow, the word dives over the cliff edge of the unfamiliar lips and tongue it had never rolled off before.

It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. He doesn’t want to hear his own voice. He needs to hear _him_. 

His name, that solitary spell, all magnificent magic wrapped into one word, is poised on the tip of his tongue, balancing on the precipice of spoken thought.

Lightning strikes another wave of pain through him and wrenches that perfect sound from Harry’s chest in a desperate plea of incantation. The downpour washes the name iridescent but thunder shatters the sound before he can truly hear it, enveloping him in the same sodden solitary silence.

He has to close the window.

Shoving off the bureau, he stumbles to the window. Teeth clenched and face streaking with rain, he squeezes his eyes shut and slams the window closed, falling against it.

His finger trembles as he drags it across the fogging glass, clearing a fragmented view to the outside through transparent words. 

_His voice. Please don’t let me forget his voice._

His knees soak up the downpour when he slides to the floor, temple lolling against the windowsill. 

His heart beats the two syllables, struggles to pump the name to his foggy brain.

He needs to speak him into existence. 

Breathing without him is the only chance they have left to survive.

But he needs him.

_You’re building cathedrals to sanctify your shame, purifying your perversions with the rain driving through glass-stained windowpanes._

_But you still can’t tear a hole in your paper sky._

_Still can’t break free of all you’re trying to defy._

_Still can’t bear to say goodbye._

_You’ve played every last card in your reckless game only to lose to the royal flush in his hands._

Another crack of lightning illuminates the room, a natural strobe light that flickers over his collapsed form. 

Together, the pain won’t end. Together, the magic they never properly learned to harness will consume them, star-crossed supernaturals incinerated by the very blaze that’s kept them alive all these years. 

He can’t be without him. His body doesn’t know how to be without him anymore. 

The name wells up from some untouchable chasm too deep for the magic to reach, breaks past his lips in a choked cry before the windstorm can swallow it.

_“Louis.”_

A warm hand lights on his cheek, draws his gaze up to sharp blue eyes undimmed by pain. He’s beautiful, he’s home, he’s every metaphor of wild impossibility Harry can’t think of.

“I’m here, Hazza.”

_He’s here. He’s your right here, your right now. He’s the whirlwind of each present moment that keeps you from ever looking back or looking ahead, because if you do, you’ll miss something important, something special, and you don’t ever want to miss a single moment that’s his._

_Except every moment is his._

“You’re not real.” Harry tips forward until their temples meet, eyes squeezing shut at the wisp of hair that caresses his cheek. 

Louis curves into him, his touch only an echo to Harry’s mind. He’s the muscle memory of smoke and spice firmly imprinted on Harry’s psyche like the silent ‘s’ of his name.

“I’m real. Hazza, I’m real.”

_He's always been real, frighteningly real. He's been your answer to how to live. And you know you've been his._

Slender fingers curl around the curve of Harry’s jaw but no power sparks between them to bruise his skin. No warmth momentarily soothes the magic scraping through his bloodlines.

“You’re real. But you’re not here. You can’t be here. I need you here, L-” The veins in his arms light up, the magic flaring in tandem with the electrical storm. He chokes through the pain, clenches his fingers in thin fabric untouched by the rain.

Blackberry bruises stain the curve of Louis’s neck, a bitter tribute to his tainted touch. 

_You_ _touched. You shouldn’t have touched. You had to touch. You did that. Somewhere in the confidence games you both played with fate, you did this to him._

His name. He knows his name. What was his name?

Lips press to his own, trail captured starlight up to his temple. A hand slides down his arm and curves over his palm, pulls away to reveal the card still in it. 

He looks down.

_Remember, Hazza._

Hazza.

Harry.

“I need _you_. Not a ghost of me.” Louis pushes his temple against Harry’s, cradles his face between warm palms. 

“I can’t forget you,” Harry breathes, combing tangled strands from blue eyes.

Louis kisses him again and reaches up, smoothes his palm over the desperate words stained into the window above Harry’s head.

They don’t smear.

“It’s not me you need to remember.”

_Bound together at the start, bound to come apart. But you know distance is no match for the magic you share. You’ve been afraid to look because you don’t want to lose the only piece you might have left of him by finding out it isn’t there anymore. But that’s not the magic of soulmates._

“You know where I am. See _me_ , Hazza, not just my memories.”

Lightning flashes, Harry closes his eyes.

  
  


∾

  
  


Rain batters the front window of Niall’s flat, dragging in glistening gashes down the glass.

“You’re me fucking best mate, Tommo. Keep fighting.” Niall tightens his grip on Louis’s wrists, their arms crossed together over Louis’s chest. “I’m not going to fucking let go of you, ye hear?” 

Trapped unseen in the doorway, Harry can only watch, helpless, as Louis strains to contain the bursts of magic carving away at his resistance. A choked off sound wells in the back of Louis’s throat, glassy pupils flashing lightning-strike green. His clenched fingers splay out above Niall’s hold, veins weeping teal rivulets of energy.

Tears prick at the corners of Niall’s eyes, match the ones in Louis’s. Niall’s embrace doesn’t falter even as the slivers of power slipping through Louis’s defenses singe his skin.

“You’ve forgotten how to breathe on your fucking own. You’ve let the whole fucking world decide all you are is a twin flame but you’re not. You need to be just _Louis_. Fight it, Tommo.” He presses his nose into Louis’s temple. “Fight.”

  
  
  
  


∞

  
  
  


Thunder cracks overhead and rattles the electricity in Harry’s bones. The magic spills over, knocks the air from his lungs. He curls into the solid phantom holding him, gasping hot tears into the space between his own fingerprints on Louis’s neck.

“Lou, I was there. I was there, I-”

He yearns for his ghost to haunt Louis too, curl around his exhausted form and help him find the strength to keep fighting to protect Niall from their magic, even as Niall does everything he can to keep Louis from forgetting himself. He so desperately needs to be where Niall is, his every instinct pointing him in a single direction, begging him to give in, let the magic take hold and lose himself completely in Louis.

_What good does it do you to gain your whole world only to lose yourself in the end? You burrowed deep into the molten core of your perfect world and now you’re both being incinerated by your own ignorant euphoria._

Smoke and spice envelop him, keep him from collapsing to the wet floor.

“You can’t do this alone, Hazza. Ring Liam.”

“I can’t. I can’t control it like you can.” Harry’s veins glow, magic sparks once more from crystalline fingertips. Freezing, he hunches in until the surge passes before sinking exhausted against the wall beneath the window. “I’ll hurt him.” 

A soft mouth slants over his own, tongue soothing across the seam of his lips. He opens for him, leans into the candy-coated caress.

_He’s always tasted of smoky chocolate, hasn’t he? A sticky-sweet mess that smeared your lips and tongue whenever you were lucky enough to indulge in him. But you made your own forever-Lent so long ago you're forgetting what he tastes like, aren’t you?_

_You’ll never forget._

“I need you,” Louis breathes. “I can’t do this... I can’t save us both alone.”

Harry’s eyes squeeze shut but the world spins him round in dizzying circles. He tries to hold it all in, but the pain and power seep through the cracks of broken-down eyelids, slip-sliding their way into his mind, running muddy over his heart and spilling cloudy over his vision. 

“I can’t. I don’t have your strength.” 

Lightning flashes the world white and leaves spots on his vision long after it’s gone, reflecting through the rain like blurred white spheres, millions of little ghosts appearing orbed on the photograph of his imagination.

Only one ghost has ever mattered to him.

“You’re strong enough when it comes to me.” Louis’s lips brush over the corner of his mouth, palm warm on his cheek. “Listen to yourself. You’ll do what it takes to survive.”

Listen. Listen to the incessant monologue his mind can’t control because it can’t find the source. 

_You closed your eyes to try and see the world, covered your ears to try and hear. You know you'll never be able to sing if you don't open your mouth. But the unseen breeds the obscene. Life is just one big palindrome for you and you can ‘live evil’ or you can live not at all. Live evil, but it's just a veil because you're vile. You’re not vile, it's just a veil._

_Which way does your palindrome go?_

He is the source. The words are _his_ , welling from too deep for the magic to reach. Somewhere in the heart that’s beat for years for Louis, he’s still there, he’s still Harry.

One vertebra at a time Louis collapses into him, eyes falling shut. His form flickers, but the boom of thunder can’t overpower the whisper that echoes through Harry’s skull.

“Hazza, please. Do it.”

Inescapably entwined beneath the window where they’d been tangled together too long ago, Harry gathers Louis against his chest. 

His lips brush the curve of Louis’s ear. He breathes the words he prays Louis will hear.  
  
“Survive, Lou.”

His hand fumbles across the floor for his mobile, dropped hours or days or years ago.

The line connects.

Liam is there, the anxious relief in his voice drumming that name one more notch back into his core.

“ _Harry_.”

Lightning fragments the room in a floodlight burst. Agony shocks up his spine and out his skin. Blood fills his mouth when his teeth sink into the tender flesh of his own lip. He crumbles to the ground, curled around the weakening rebel ghost forever attached to his psyche.

“Please, Liam. I can’t do this alone.”

They were Icarus. They were the sun.

Icarus flew too close to the sun and wasn’t the only one to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> You made it. You have my sincere congratulations! As ever I'm in awe of you readers. Please consider leaving comment or kudos if you liked it.
> 
> If you're a tumblr person, here's a link to the [rebloggable fic post](https://mercurial-madhouse.tumblr.com/post/634689665163837440/event-horizon-42k-m-by-mercurial-madhouse)!
> 
> I'd love to know your thoughts! Did you catch the plot twist before it was revealed? :) Thanks so much for reading!


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